Penguin Nickname Legend

Youngstown State University is the only Division I University in
the country with a Penguin for a mascot and the nickname Penguins
for their athletic teams.

Prior to 1933, Youngstown College had been referred to as "Y"
College, YoCo, Wye Collegians and many times, simply the "Locals."

There are two accounts of how the nickname occurred, and,
interestingly enough,
they come from the same evening on Jan. 30, 1933.

The first account states that on a cold, freezing night at a
men's basketball game at West Liberty State, in West Liberty, W.
Va., a spectator watching the members of the team stomp on the
floor and swing their arms made them look like Penguins and without
a nickname, the fans took a liking to the word.

But throughout the season prior to that contest, many of the
members of the 1932-33 varsity men's basketball team and their
friends on campus spent idle moments in the cafeteria discussing
suitable new names for our school sports combines, basketball, and
fencing that year.

The names considered covered every conceivable spectrum of
animals, birds, and things associated with the steel city, but none
seemed to fit us. There was always someone who pointed out an
inadequacy of some sort. The name we finally warmed up to, and
finally unanimously accepted, came as a result of the trip to West
Liberty State Teachers College for a basketball game there late in
January 1933.

In West Virginia, the road to West Liberty that evening had been
hit by a snowfall between one and two feet deep. The passengers in
two of the cars found it necessary on several occasions to get out
and help push their vehicles out of snow drifts or road area with
snow ruts, difficult to drive through.

During the trip, Bennett Kunicki recalls, the discussion of a
nickname for the school was the hot topic of conversation. In
Kunicki's car, the name Penguins came up and was well received by
everyone in the car. Upon arrival at the West Liberty gym, the name
was mentioned to the members of the team who thought it was
perfect.

By the end of that school year, the nickname was unanimously
accepted by the student body without the necessity of a formal
polling vote. Plans were then made to introduce the new name during
the 1933-34 basketball season.

The nickname Penguins was formally introduced to the school in
the "Jambar" (Vol. IV, No. 3) at the beginning of the 1933-34
basketball season. Page three of that issue was set up to cover
YSU's first game to introduce the members of that season's team and
to give the schedule for the season. The date of the "Jambar" issue
was Dec. 15, 1933. Within the next five or six weeks, Penguins
became our newly accepted nickname both in the Jambar and on the
sports pages of the then two local newspapers.

The name was introduced after the first game with Slippery Rock
in the Dec. 15, 1933 issue of the "Jambar". The Youngstown Telegram
first used the nickname in a headline on Dec. 29, 1933 while The
Vindicator first acknowledged the nickname in its Jan. 27, 1934
edition.